MELVIN M. NEWLAND, MINISTER
RIDGE CHAPEL, KANSAS, OK
(Revised: 2009)
A. Possibly the best known & most beloved passage of Scripture read at Christmas time is the account of the birth of Jesus found in Luke 2:1-20. Let me read just a part of that, vs’s 8-14, as recorded in the New King James Version.
“Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, & the glory of the Lord shone around them, & they were greatly afraid.
“Then the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.’
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God & saying: ‘Glory to God in the highest, & on earth peace, goodwill to men!’”
ILL. I imagine that almost everyone here this morning is familiar with Charlie Brown in the comic strips. Well, a few years ago it pictured Lucy walking up to Charlie Brown just before Christmas & saying to him, "Charlie Brown, since it is Christmas, I suggest that we lay aside all our differences & be friends for this season of the year."
Charlie Brown says, "That's a great idea, Lucy, but why does it have to be just at this time of the year? Why can't we be friends all year long?"
Lucy looks at him with that look that only Lucy can get & says, "What are you, a fanatic or something?"
B. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we actually started to practice the things that we hear & sing about at Christmas time? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we would take Christmas with us all the way through the new year before us?
And when it comes to thinking about how Christmas should affect us, I can’t help but think of the words of the Christmas hymn, “I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day.”
I heard the bells on Christmas day their old familiar carols play,
And wild & sweet the words repeat of peace on earth, good will to men.
And in despair I bowed my head: “There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong, & mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men.”
Yet pealed the bells more loud & deep: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to men.”
- by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
If all who talk about "peace on earth" during December actually started to practice it & recruited others to practice it, think how different our world would become. If all who talk about "good will to men" suddenly began to be good to the people around them & recruited others to do the same, think how different our world would be.
ILL. Someone has compared Christmas to skydiving. Christmas is like that sense of freedom & excitement you feel when you jump out of an airplane & are free falling through the air. You feel the wind on your face & can see the beauty of God's world for miles around.
But the earth is rushing toward you, so you pull the ripcord. Your parachute jerks open, & soon you hit the ground with a jolt. For a few brief moments you felt a wonderful exhilaration & then "plop." You are on the ground, facing reality once again, back to the humdrum of everyday life.
C. Is that what has happened with Christmas? Christmas is wonderful, & then "plop," it is face to face with reality once again?
What about the shepherds who heard the angels & saw the baby Jesus? Did that Christmas make any difference in their lives? And what about the wise men who came to worship, who brought gifts of gold, frankincense & myrrh? I’m convinced that once they saw Jesus, their lives were never quite the same again.
I. JESUS MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE HOME
A. Certainly, life was never the same again for Mary & Joseph. They now had a baby to take care of, & their lives were changed forever.
ILL. I remember when Patty, our first child was born. I looked at her tiny little face & realized that I shared the responsibility of molding & forming her personality & guiding her to be what God wanted her to be. What an awesome responsibility!
I imagine that Mary & Joseph felt that in a much greater way than any of us, because the child that they held in their arms was God's only begotten Son. They were responsible for raising God's child!
ILL. The late Erma Bombeck in her book, "If Life is a bowl of Cherries, Why Am I Always in the Pits?", recalled the legend of a church where the chimes rang miraculously whenever someone gave a generous gift.
But the chimes hadn't rung for a long time, even though kings & potentates had come to give gifts of gold & silver & precious gems. The chimes had not rung for a long, long time.
But one Christmas Eve a little peasant boy came down the aisle & knelt before the altar. As he thought about the Christ child lying in a manger, he took off his tattered coat & laid it on the altar. When he did, the chimes rang loud & joyously.
Erma Bombeck wrote, "I've heard the chimes ring, too. I remember a Christmas when one of my sons brought me a piece of tattered construction paper on which he had tried to draw a picture of praying hands, & underneath the picture he had written, 'O Come, Holy Spit.'"
"When I saw that," she said, "I heard the chimes ring & I knew that a very special gift had been given."
"On another Christmas I received a shoebox all clumsily wrapped. When I opened it, I found two baseball cards & a piece of gum. Again I heard the chimes ring."
"And I heard the chimes ring the time when the kids got together & cleaned the garage & gave that as their Christmas present to me."
"Those days are long gone," she remembered, "days when we fashioned lace doilies into snow flakes, & pipe cleaners into Christmas trees. When we took empty spools & used them for candleholders. Those days are long gone."
"I remember little feet coming down the stairs with a hand made gift all wrapped up in $2.00 worth of wrapping paper to put underneath the Christmas tree. Those little feet now wear panty hose & fashion boots."
"Little hands that used to break the piggy bank to get 59 cents to buy a Christmas gift, now hold credit cards that are good in any store in town."
"We'll have a good Christmas this year," she wrote. "We'll eat too much. We'll mess up the living room & throw the warranties in the fire by mistake. We'll put bows on the dog's tail. We'll take bites out of cookies... We'll listen to Christmas songs, & have a good Christmas."
"But, Lord, what I wouldn't give to bend over just one more time & receive some toothpicks held together by library paste & to hear the chimes ring just one more time."
B. You see, our homes are important because it is at home that we not only talk about love & trust, but we learn to live with love & trust.
It is at home where we don't just talk about “peace & good will to men” but we learn to live it. Then our children will go out into the world as ambassadors of peace. But if they don't learn peace, they'll go out into the world angry & upset at themselves & everyone else.
You see, home is the place where we mold & fashion little people into big people who will one day mold & fashion the world of which they are a part.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if all of us took the message of Christmas & made it a permanent part of our lives, & put it into practice all year long?
II. JESUS MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE OUT IN THE WORLD
Wouldn't it be something if we would take the message of Christmas wherever we went? Now, I know that is not fashionable today. We are being told all the time that you can't mix church & state - that somehow you've got to put your religion in a box & take it out only on Sunday morning. You're not supposed to pray in school. You are not supposed to talk about God at work.
But for many of us that is hard to do. I really believe that if people have been touched by the message of Christmas that they have to be a Christian everywhere. Rules & regulations may try to restrict us, but we need to take Christ with us wherever we go.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could take Christ into the marketplace, into the workplace, to school, & wherever we might go, & not leave Him in the manger? What a difference He could make!
III. JESUS MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN OUR LIVES
Finally, if we take Christ into our homes, if we take Christ to our jobs, to our schools, to all our activities, then He becomes the solid foundation on which we can build our lives.
A. There are people preaching what I believe is a false doctrine today that says that if you become a Christian, then God will take care of everything for you. You won't have to be concerned about anything because God will make you healthy & wealthy from that day on.
Some are making that the foundation of their faith, & when it doesn't happen to them, they lose their faith. But God never made us that promise.
He didn't promise that to Mary & Joseph. Sometime after Christmas came the Wise Men, & that was exciting! But soon came a time of hardship for Mary & Joseph. They had to flee from Bethlehem to Egypt. Listen to Matthew 2:13-16, 19-23,
“When (the Magi) had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘take the child & his mother & escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.’
“So he got up, took the child & his mother during the night & left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.”
“When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, & he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem & in its vicinity who were two years old & under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. . . .
“After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt & said, ‘Get up, take the child & his mother & go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.’
“So he got up, took the child & his mother & went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there.
"Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, & he went & lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: ‘He will be called a Nazarene.’”
Finally, when they made their home in Nazareth, do you think that life for them there was a bed of roses? I'm sure that it wasn't. They worked, paid bills, bought food & went through all the monotonies of life. Living in a conquered land, under the iron fist of Rome, they must at times have been worried & anxious, maybe even afraid. God never promised a rose garden to Joseph & his family.
In fact, someplace along the way Joseph drops out of the scene. We don't know what happened to him. We don't know how or when he died.
But somewhere along the line Mary found herself without a husband, without a father at home for her children. Life wasn't easy. It was hard. I wonder if she felt that God had forgotten about them?
B. How about us? We have our problems, too, don't we? We've shed tears. We've been touched by death, illness & hardships. We've faced financial troubles. Life has not been easy. It's been hard.
But Jesus in our lives is the one thing that makes all the difference - that gives us a solid foundation, the strength to endure, & even to overcome. So the real work of Christmas is just now starting. Christmas is not over. It is just now starting.
ILL. Howard Thurman wrote, "When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings & princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, then the real work of Christmas begins."
To find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to visit the prisoner, to rebuild the nation, to bring peace among brothers & sisters, to make music in the heart that is the real work of Christmas!
Yes, we'll take down our Christmas trees & put the decorations back in storage for another year. All the presents have been unwrapped, the suspense has ended. But may the music linger. May the songs of peace & good will forever be in our hearts.
May our homes be filled with the fragrances, sounds, & excitement of Christmas forever. May we take its message with us so that all the world might be touched by it as we have been touched by it.
This morning God's invitation is extended to you. If you have never experienced God's love, if you have never accepted Jesus as your Lord & Savior, then we invite you to make that decision this morning. If you are searching for a church home, we invite you to come this morning as we stand & as we sing together.
